CS is a part of everything nowadays. I never studied CS; I taught myself. My bachelor's is in Criminal Justice, which I never used other than to find work in ot

CS is a part of everything nowadays. I never studied CS; I taught myself. My bachelor's is in Criminal Justice, which I never used other than to find work in other countries (mostly as a teacher) Now I work as a remote programmer for a Geoinformatics company. My masters will be in Geoinformatics because I found that I like maps and that cool mapping tech that uses different kinds of sensors and stuff. It sounds like your friends, who got into it for the money, may be the kind that burn out and not get into it later on in life. If what you say is true, you're more passionate about it and will continue to code even in the bad times. Use it as a platform to find problems you want to solve, and use your knowledge to solve those problems. CS has _always_ involved unsustainable hours. The trick is to get good enough so that you don't have to do that. Maybe go into a more niche field (like what I'm doing)